Penn Press Log

This Month's Podcast: Saladin M. Ambar on Governors, Presidents, and Governors as Presidents

In the May Penn Press podcast, Lehigh University political scientist Saladin M. Ambar, author of How Governors Built the Modern American Presidency, discusses the role that governorship played in shaping America's executive branch. Ambar talks about the influence of governors and presidents such as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Bob La Follette, and Rutherford Hayes. He also discusses the implications of this leadership legacy for the 2012 presidential election.

Visit the Penn Press podcast page to listen.

This Month's Podcast: A Reading from The Satires of Horace

In the April Penn Press podcast, our own Sara Davis reads selections from The Satires of Horace, translated by A.M. Juster. In the Satires, the Roman philosopher and dramatic critic Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65-3 B.C.), known as Horace, provides trenchant social commentary on men's perennial enslavement to money, power, fame, and sex. Juster's striking new translation relies on the tools and spirit of the English light verse tradition while taking care to render the original text as accurately as possible.

Davis reads "Satire 1" and an excerpt from "Satire 10."

Visit the Penn Press podcast page to listen.

This Month's Podcast: Astounding Wonder author John Cheng on Readers, Race, and Rocket Science

In the March Penn Press podcast, historian and patent-holder John Cheng discusses the early culture of popular science fiction. Cheng's new book, Astounding Wonder: Imagining Science and Science Fiction in Interwar America, examines the origins of the genre and its community of fans. Cheng shows how pulp science fiction magazines of the 1920s and 30s reflected mainstream views of race and gender while inspiring both professional scientists and amateurs to pursue research.

Cheng talks about science fiction publishing pioneer Hugo Gernsback, Ming the Merciless, and a group of science fiction fans and rocket enthusiasts first known as the American Interplanetary Society. AIS spawned Reaction Motors, makers of the rocket engine that powered the Bell X-1.

Visit the Penn Press podcast page to listen.

This Month's Podcast: Shawn Leigh Alexander on the Civil Rights Struggle Before the NAACP

In the February podcast Shawn Leigh Alexander, Assistant Professor of African and African American Studies and interim director of the Langston Hughes Center at the University of Kansas, talks about the efforts of T. Thomas Fortune and more well-known African American activists between the end of the Reconstruction and the establishment of the NAACP in 1909. An Army of Lions: The Civil Rights Struggle Before the NAACP is Alexander's latest book.

Click here to listen to the interview.

Paul's Pick of the Month, a Free Article from the Journal Humanity

Every month, Paul Chase in the Penn Press Journals department invites our beloved blog readers to download a complimentary article from one of our many scholarly journals.

Paul's Pick for December comes from the journal Humanity, a semiannual publication dedicated to publishing original research and reflection on human rights, humanitarianism, and development in the modern and contemporary world.

On "Humanitarian" Adoption (Madonna in Malawi) by Kerry Bystrom, appears in the Fall 2012 issue of Humanity. The essay explores media representations of transnational adoption to chart northern perceptions of the practice. "Understandings of adoption as rescue and violent exploitation, of egoistic and altruistic, of gift, theft, and constrained choice, undercut and overlay each other," writes Bystrom.

To download this free article and learn more about Humanity, click here.

Check the Penn Press Log on January 15 for Paul's next pick.

This Month's Penn Press Podcast: Michael Katz Asks Why Don't American Cities Burn?

In the December 2011 Penn Press podcast, Michael B. Katz, Walter H. Annenberg Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania, discusses the history of urban inequality, the significance of race, and the mechanisms of social control detailed in his latest book Why Don't American Cities Burn? Katz recalls how his personal experience with Philadelphia's criminal justice system added a new dimension to his research. He also shares his early impression of the Occupy Wall Street movement. 

Click here to listen to the interview.

This Month's Podcast: Anthropologists Explore Sustainable Lifeways

For the November podcast, we dip into the archives for a second listen to Naomi F. Miller, Katherine M. Moore, and Kathleen Ryan from University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. The group discusses the facets of Sustainable Lifeways, a volume which explores how humans adapt to changes in their environment over time.

This Month's Penn Press Podcast: Mitchell D. Silber on The Al Qaeda Factor

In the October podcast, Mitchell D. Silber, Director of Intelligence Analysis for the New York Police Department, talks about his forthcoming book, The Al Qaeda Factor: Plots Against the West.

In The Al Qaeda Factor, terrorism expert  Silber examines sixteen Al Qaeda associated plots and attacks against the West, from the 1993 World Trade Center bombing through to today. In the podcast, he discusses his findings and the implications of his research for law enforcement strategy.

The audio interview with Silber is available at the Penn Press podcast page.

The Disaster Experts: Mastering Risk in Modern America--Now Available

The Disaster Experts: Mastering Risk in Modern America
Scott Gabriel Knowles
280 pages | 6 x 9 | 22 illus.
Cloth Sep 2011 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4350-5 | $45.00 | £29.50
A volume in the City in the Twenty-First Century series

"In The Disaster Experts, Scott Knowles makes a key contribution to our understanding of how American disaster policy has evolved over time. This book is a way to appreciate at a deeper level why and how Americans are prepared in some ways, and profoundly unprepared in others, for the disasters to come in the twenty-first century."--James Lee Witt, Chief Executive Officer, Witt Associates, and FEMA Director, 1993-2001

This book traces the intertwined histories of disaster experts—specialists in predicting the unpredictable and managing the unmanageable—revealing how their interdisciplinary research and practices over the past century have shaped modern America.

Read more . . .

Book reviewers: to request a press copy, contact Saunders Robinson.
Educators: to request an exam copy for course use consideration, click here.

Click here to listen to the Knowles The Disaster Experts interview.

A Penn Press Podcast Interview with The Disaster Experts Author Scott Gabriel Knowles

The tenth anniversary of the September 11th attacks is fast approaching. In the August podcast,  historian Scott Gabriel Knowles, author of The Disaster Experts: Mastering Risk in Modern America, reflects on the destruction of the World Trade Center towers in New York City and the past decade's rash of urban disasters, including Hurricane Katrina. Knowles traces the development of American interdisciplinary disaster mitigation and prevention expertise from the fire safety research that arose from the ashes of city fires at the dawn of the twentieth century, to Cold War civil defense planning, to the creation of FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security. Knowles also talks about the implications of U.S. history on current and future efforts to deal with current terrorist threats and climate change.

Scott Gabriel Knowles is Associate Professor of History at Drexel University and is the editor of Imagining Philadelphia: Edmund Bacon and the Future of the City, also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.

Click here to listen to the Knowles The Disaster Experts interview.